Posts Tagged ‘nonfiction’

Eva Marie Everson is the bestselling, multiple award-winning author of both fiction and nonfiction. She is the president of Word Weavers International and the director of Florida Christian Writers Conference and the North Georgia Christian Writers Conference.

Eva Marie is a popular speaker at writers conferences and women’s groups across the United States.

Award-winning author Eva Marie Everson wraps up a Christmas story of hope, love, and forgiveness just in time for the holidays.

The Ornament Keeper, a contemporary Christmas novella, features Felicia and Jackson Morgan who are spending their first Christmas apart after twenty years of marriage. But a lifetime of gifted ornaments helps Felicia piece together the story of their marriage and the one mistake of unforgiveness she made before they said, “I do.”

Can these memory-filled ornaments reunite this family before Christmas? Only time will tell.

I tiptoed past my sleeping daughter, her arms still wrapped around Mr. Snuggles, her cheeks flushed from crying, and into the hallway, then down the stairs where my purse still lay in the wingback chair. After pulling out my phone, I called Jackson, then held my breath, wondering if he would bother to answer.

“I’m too tired for round two,” he said as a sleepy hello.

“I’m not calling for that,” I said, keeping my voice low. “I wanted you to know that Sara came home early. She—she um . . . she’s pretty upset. Billy broke up with her today.”

Jackson sighed deeply from the other end. “Oh, man. Did she say why?”

“Something about it being too long between marriage and his degree or some such nonsense. But she—”

When I didn’t finish my thought, he asked, “What? She what?” “Well,” I said, easing back in the chair, “She indicated that—I don’t think anything has, you know, happened between them.”

His groan lasted what felt like a full minute. “Felicia, honestly. Is that all you ever worry about?”

I frowned. Out of the three of us—them and me—which of us was right? Could it be as they’d always said? Had I let my fears get the better of me? Had it tainted my views on everything? “Now you sound like Sara,” I admitted. Or had she sounded like him?

“At least she’s still got her good sense then. And if I know our daughter, like her old man, she’ll pull herself up by her bootstraps and be fine. By this time tomorrow, Billy what’s-his-name will be just that. Nothing but a faint memory.”

Like her old man? “Is that what’s happened with us? Have you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps? Are you fine without us?”

He growled. “Felicia—”

“Jackson, I didn’t call to have a tug of war with words.” I crossed my legs.

“Then why did you call?”

“Because,” I said as though my reasoning should be obvious. “Sara is your daughter too. And I thought you’d want to know.”

“Of course I want to know.”

“And for your information, that is not all I worry about. I just don’t want—”

“What?” he asked. And when I didn’t answer—when I couldn’t answer for the knot forming in my throat—he answered for me. “You don’t want her to end up like you? Pregnant and married? Not because she’s in love and can’t see the raw future for the stars in her eyes but because it’s expected of her? My gosh, Felicia, I thought we’d gotten past all that. I thought we’d built something and built it out of nothing. Those kids of ours didn’t come out of three one-night stands, you know.”

My jaw flexed. “I don’t have to sit here and listen to this, Jackson. I only wanted you to know—”

“Thank you, then. Thank you for telling me. I’ll come by in the morning before work to check on her.”

“I doubt she’ll be awake . . .”

“Then I’ll text her in the morning and see if she wants to meet for lunch.” He waited a breath before adding. “Leesha . . .”

“What,” I whispered.

“Don’t think for one minute that I haven’t been in love with you since senior year. That night—the night after Dad died—may not have been our wisest move, but I don’t regret it. Not for one second.”

I squeezed my eyes shut against his words. Hot tears pushed past my lashes and made their way down my cheeks.

“I can only pray that one day you’ll feel the same way. One thing I’ve learned in all this is that God uses everything, Felicia. Even our mess-ups.”

A
small town with a dark secret. A new arrival in grave danger. Can she
solve the mystery before she ends up the next victim?

The
best part of Emily’s childhood may have been the time she spent with
her quirky aunt. So when her favorite relative passes away, she drops
everything to attend the funeral in the small town of Oak Creek. But
she never expected to inherit her aunt’s entire estate, including her
massive black dog Bentley. Just as she starts to get the hang of
small-town life, an unknown driver runs her off the road and sends
her to the hospital.

As
doctors tend to her and she makes a connection with a charming Oak
Creek resident named Ryan, Emily racks her brain to figure out who
would want her dead. When sparks start to fly between her and the
Good Samaritan that sat by her bedside, they team up to solve the
mystery. Digging into the crime starts to reveal a dark side to Oak
Creek and long-held secrets nobody wants revealed. Emily and Ryan
must uncover the truth before her assailant comes back to finish the
job.

B.K. Stubblefield is
a new writer with a passion for animal rescue. After adopting her new
dog Harper, she was quickly overwhelmed with the challenges of
raising a “puppy on steroids”. Together with her close
friend, Debra Wagner, she published ‘Rescued: A Tale of Two Dogs’,
two nonfiction tales of love, patience and commitment.

In an
effort to help bring awareness to animal neglect and abuse in our own
neighborhoods, B.K. Stubblefield shares several short stories of
animals brought out of the shadows and into the light of love in her
second book “Rescued: Out of The Shadows.”

Fictional
short stories and memory books/journals continue to carry the theme
of dog rescue.

B.K. Stubblefield is also a contributing author
to “Be Their Voice: An Anthology for Rescue, Volume I & II

Her debut novel,
‘Secrets in Oak Creek’, a mystery/romance, was published n November
2017.

Born and raised
in Germany, the author has spent many years supporting her husband’s
military career. Moving between Europe and the United States, she now
makes her home in the small rural town of Elizabethtown, Kentucky
where she enjoys the slower pace of small town living. Early morning
weekend walks with her dog Harper are among her favorite activities.

Mike
Lewis boldly narrates his fantastical story and confesses his secret:
He sees horrifying visions of disturbing future events through a
kaleidoscope each time he closes his eyes. He’d like to live a normal
life, but an elusive threat prohibits him from doing that.Someone
wants to study his mystical ability and they’ll do whatever it takes
to further their strange, covert agenda.

The
Vision Chronicles eight-book thriller series is a slice-of-life
metaphysical/visionary story that details Mike’s changing ability as
he protects himself, his family, and his friends from those who
doggedly pursue him. If you love mind-boggling suspense with a dash
of paranormal and a touch of romance, this is the series for you!

Award-winning
author, Chariss K. Walker, M.Msc., writes both fiction and nonfiction
books with a metaphysical and spiritual component. Her fiction
expresses a visionary/metaphysical message that illustrates growth in
a character’s consciousness while utilizing a paranormal aspect. Her
nonfiction books share insight, hope, and inspiration. Even though
Chariss writes dark-fiction about insanely dark topics, such as
sexual abuse, incest, pedophilia, sexual assault, and other
inappropriate dinner conversation, there is always an essential
question of the abstract nature that gives a reader increasing
awareness and perception. All of her books are sold worldwide in
eBook, paperback, and many are in large print.

The most difficult thing about being an author is making a living. We write books because we have a passion and not to get rich or famous. In my past, I worked as an investment banker and have earned a good living. Now that I am working full time as an author, new-media journalist and speaker, I’m working twice as hard for less money–but I’ve never been happier.

Who has made the greatest difference for you as a writer?

Everything good that I’ve ever read has inspired me to write, to write better, to write more, but the greatest difference maker for me has been a supportive spouse. Gail (my wife of 27 years) is the key to my success.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

This book is written to help ordinary families make more sense of their finances to enable them to do the good in the world that they seek to do. People of ordinary means really can make a difference in the world.

What is the name of your new book?

925 Ideas to Help You Save Money, Get Out of Debt and Retire A Millionaire So You Can Leave Your Mark on the World

Tell us more about it.

925 Ideas… is a guide to helping families succeed financially. Shortly after I wrote the book, a young mother approached me to say that the book had saved her marriage by giving her and her husband a common language and way to think about money. Together they developed a financial plan, drawing on the principles in the book, and moved forward together.

What genre does your book fall under?

While it is generally considered nonfiction, retirement planning, I think of it is a self-empowerment resource.

What other books would you compared to?

It could be compared with Suze Orman’s book, The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom: Practical and Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop Worrying.

What kind of impact do you expect your works to have in the reader’s lives?

Readers say that the book enables them to understand and manage money better. My goal is that this enables them to do the good in the world that they want to do so they don’t feel limited by money, especially debt!

To promote or not, that is the great dilemma. If you are an author, you have to promote your book or no one will know it is there. Besides, even if you are traditionally published you are expected to promote your book. If you ask me, promoting is the least fun thing you do as an author. After all, you want to move on into your next book, not spend hours convincing people that they should buy your book.

Most of the time, promotion is the last thing an author thinks of, and in many cases, they publish their books and have no idea that they should have started to promote it a year before it came out of the oven. Here you will find some ideas to get you comfortable with the thought and you won’t freeze in stupor when you get there.

Send out free PDFs, or ebooks, to bloggers who have tons of followers. If your book is non-fiction, send out digital copies to influential journalists. Ask the bloggers to review it in their blogs.

(Some bloggers or reviewers need a month to read the book. Always ask way beforehand.)

Pull out excerpts of the book to use as articles. Post them on free sites.

Create videos. Keep it short and sweet (under 10 m.) In one, talk about you. In another, talk about your book. Then in another, read an excerpt from it, etc.

Create a book trailer. Find pictures that reflect the content of your book and then use excerpts from the book to tease people to read more. Never tell the ending and make it short.

Schedule a launch day and make sure plenty of things are planned that day. Notify your email list, facebook, goodreads, twitter, a week before and then the day of. Don’t forget to post the different links to your videos and trailer’s one at the time.

Offer a digital copy as a prize on other websites and blogs. Offer the blogger or website owners a free paperback book for their help. You can have a goodreads giveaway…

Ask other bloggers to do an interview and send them lots of questions you made up, with their answers. (You can send the same list to all of them and they can pick how long and what to post from it.)

If you assign these bloggers to do your review on a different day of the week each, this is called a Blog tour. Make sure every day has one blogger or more assigned to it. You’ll gain maximum exposure for minimum costs. Select other authors or readers to do this…other authors, will get you in contact with other readers.

Offer a chapter as a downloadable PDF. Encourage readers to share it with others.

Publish the book’s table of contents on your website. Include a small overview of each chapter. (Really short) Optimize the page for search engines. (List many pertinent tags to attract new readers looking for your genre.)

Encourage people to write a five-star review of your book on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, GoodReads.

Publish reviews and testimonials of the book on your website. Include links to the reviews from Amazon.com and other sites.

Makes sure you always say thank you to all that help you and join their sites to show that you appreciate their help.

Make bookmarks to pass along. They are more usable than cards which are easily thrown away. (Check online for cost-effective sources.) Make sure they contain your website and email.

Always have copies of your book and bookmarks with you or in your car.

Be creative, persistent and grateful for the help of others and you’ll see your book sales go up. It isn’t their obligation to tell others about your book, so help them back.

It isn’t a bad Idea if you have authors or readers friends to ask them for a review, so you can use a small insert on the back or in the first page of your book.

I hope these ideas help you start your great future as a writer. Don’t forget to share your success with others and help them get ahead too. Is called pay it forward. Is always sweeter when you get to the top and your readers, friends and family are cheering you on. Happy promoting to you.

Anna del C. Dye was born in Chile. She has received six awards for her stories. She is fluent in Spanish & English and lives in Utah, with her husband of thirty-nine years. The Silent Warrior Trilogy belongs to her Elf Series that includes, seven stand-alone high fantasy books. Also, her A Royal Romance series includes, Once Upon Two Kingdoms, A Kingdom By The Sea & A Golden Princess. She has also authored The Chancellor from Connier and a middle-grade book, Emerine’s nightmare, published digitally.